Yours Faithlessly

For my psychology class this semester, we had to write a paper analysing a children's story from the perspective of a particular psychological theory. I asked my teacher if I could extend this slightly so that I could analyse Ænima... and she accepted! So here it is.

It's not due until Wednesday, so if anyone has suggestions for changes, I'd be all for hearing them.

In the background of the bleak modern music scene, like the quiet kid at a high school party, one can find the band Tool. From their 1991 EP, ‘Opiate’, through to their latest album ’10,000 Days’ (2006), Tool have consistently defied commercial trends and single-mindedly pursued their visions as artists to create brilliant and original music. Tool’s lyrics frequently explore personal and disturbing areas that few other bands would be able to tackle – on one album, they cover child abuse, self-hatred, drug addiction, and the slaughter of carrots in such an intimate way that listening to it is an uncomfortable experience. The members of the band, far from being the drug-addled rock stars that one sees in the media, are intelligent and educated in diverse areas, and this results in music that covers ideas that perhaps no other band ever has.

In this essay, I intend to examine in depth Tool’s 1996 release, Ænima, with the intent of revealing and interpreting the Jungian themes of the lyrics. To do this, it is necessary first to give an overview of Jung’s theories and approach to psychology, including his idea of archetypes, the shadow self, and the anima. I will then relate Jung’s ideas to the lyrics of the album, going through each song and highlighting the elements that can be clarified by a Jungian interpretation. From this, the overall nature of the album – a Jungian quest for re-integration with the anima, and the unconscious in general – will become clear.

Jung, like Freud, believed in an unconscious part of the mind, which was often in conflict with the conscious mind. Jung believed that humans experience the unconscious through symbols, as they are unable to communicate directly with it. These can include dreams, fables, myths, fantasies, and other areas in which symbols stand in for emotionally potent concepts. Neurosis, according to Jung, is an expression of the conflict between opposing forces in the psyche. The goal of psychoanalysis is to reconcile the conflict between the conscious and unconscious into a whole, unified state of mind that he called the Self – the fullest possible consciousness of one’s personality. He called this process individuation. For Jung, this process is teleological; the desire for reconciliation with the Self is inherent in every person, and it is the end result to which all strivings are directed. This process for Jung is inherently painful, but he believed that it is only by working through this pain that people are able to realise their true selves.

Critical to this process of individuation is Jung’s idea of archetypes. Archetypes are the natural, evolutionarily predicated instinct to act or react in a certain way to a certain kind of person or situation. Jung believed that everyone is born with these archetypes as ‘psychological organs’, or skeletons, onto which experience grows like muscle. An archetype – for example, the archetype of the Mother – will blend with the individual’s experience of mothers to form the Mother complex. A principal aspect of the process of individuation for Jung is to connect (or reconnect) the archetypal dimension with the world that the individual finds around them. Failure to do this results in ‘spiritual impoverishment and a sense of meaninglessness in life’.

The anima is one of the main psychological complexes found in men. (In women, it is called animus.) The anima is the feminine archetype in a man, combined with the individual’s experience of women; it represents nurturance, interrelatedness, empathy, and other ‘feminine’ traits. If a person is not in touch with their anima, they find it projected onto other people. For example, Jung attributes the phenomenon of falling in love at first sight as a case of anima or animus projection. Reconnection with the anima leads men into their emotional and passionate lives.

Another important psychological complex in Jung’s work is the shadow self. An individual does not wish to think of himself or herself as possessing weaknesses, shortcomings, or unsightly instincts, and so they repress these negative parts of themselves when they experience them. The shadow is the dissociated secondary personality that is formed from this repression. If the shadow self is not properly acknowledged and understood, it is often projected onto others. Instead of viewing oneself as being unattractive, for example, a person may perceive many of the people they meet to be unpleasant looking. The goal of analytical psychology is not to integrate the shadow self completely into the ego, but rather for the individual to have a good relationship between the two.

Jung’s contributions to psychology far exceed just these ideas, but they are at the core of much of what he wrote, and they have the closest relation to the themes of Ænima. Similarly, there are many interesting themes and ideas present in Ænima, but this essay will focus only on those that relate to Jungian concepts.

The best place to start a Jungian analysis of Ænima is the name of the album. It is a combination of two words – anima, Jung’s concept which I outlined above, and enema, an anal douche. This not-quite-a-word sums up the key themes of Ænima. On the one hand, it is about reconciliation with the anima, soul-searching and introspection; on the other, it is about flushing things away – in the singer’s words, ‘cleaning out the house to refurbish or redecorate and start over’. With these two ideas taken together, the word Ænima comes to represent a flushing out of the soul, purging oneself of impurities, suffering through a painful process of re-evaluation in order to achieve a higher state of being. This concept is crucial to an informed understanding of Ænima, so it is important to keep it in mind while analysing the album.

The first two songs on Ænima, Stinkfist and Eulogy, introduce the album and state of mind of the singer (who can also be thought of as the ‘narrator’, given the story-like nature of the album). The singer is alienated and disconnected from himself, and constantly has to seek greater heights of stimulation in order to feel alive. While these songs are important in understanding the album as a whole, they have little relation to Jungian concepts and thus do not fit under the scope of this essay. For this reason, I will start my analysis with the third track, titled H. As with many of Tool’s songs, the song’s lyrics are cryptic and it is unclear at first what the song is about. However, Maynard James Keenan, the vocalist and lyricist for Tool, has given clues as to its meaning: at one concert, he introduced the song by saying, “This next song is about having children. Do any of you have children? It’s amazing how much they change your life, isn’t it?” At another show, he said:
So, any of you ever watch those Warner Brothers cartoons? Sometimes there's that one where the guy's having a tough time making a decision, he's got an angel on one shoulder, a devil on the other... Usually the angel's the one that's going to give the good advice, and the devil's trying to get him to do what's going to be bad for him. It's not always that simple though. Most times they're not really angels or devils, they're just friends, giving you advice, looking out for your best interests but not really understanding what's going to be best for you, so it kind of comes down to you. You have to make the decision yourself.
Finally, in an interview in 1996, Keenan mentioned that his son’s name was Devo H.